The wolf threw its hard back. Its scream sounded like the wind in a storm. Dylan was yanked off his feet and whipped from side to side as the wolf shook its head. He hung on for a second, but the blood and ice made his handholds slippery.
First one hand lost its grip and then the other. Dylan was flung through the air and then smacked down into the road. The impact knocked the breath out of him. He sprawledthere on his back for a shocked moment, until his lungs remembered they needed to refill and cramped behind his ribs.
He rolled over onto his side as he tried to choke down air. Heat seeped through his body despite the snowmelt that puddled under him.
A booted foot rolled Dylan over onto his back, and the groom looked down at him. His eyes were leaf-green, with blood-red stains in his tear ducts.
It could still get worse. Good to know. Dylan kicked at the ground as he tried to squirm away. It didn’t work. He gave up and let his head drop back onto the ground.
“Let them go, take me instead,” he said. “Whatever you want, Yule will get it for you in return for me.”
If only so Somerset could yell at him for this mess.
The groom grinned, still too wide. The corners of his mouth were cracked. Frayed, almost. He crouched down next to Dylan and took his jaw in hard, cold fingers. They dug into Dylan’s skin as the groom shook his head back and forth in a parody of good humor. Then he let go.
“We don’t need you or Yule,” the groom said. His grin split his face, the skin of his cheeks peeling apart like old bark to reveal thorn-sharp teeth and a wet black tongue. Drool dripped down his jaw and splattered on the concrete, frozen into silver dollar-sized patches of hoarfrost as it landed. His words slurred, thick and chewed on, as he forced the rest of the sentence out. “Notallof you anyhow. Since you’re here…we’ll take what you offered last time.”
He grabbed Dylan’s arm and dragged the sleeve back to reveal a bony wrist and the battered old watch that started all this. Dylan made a noise that sounded a lot thinner and more panicked than he’d expected.
He yanked desperately on his arm and flailed at the groom with his free arm. His fist caught the edge of the groom’s cheekbone and tore the already loose skin. His knuckles scraped along the rough twisted gums and grated the skin off.
In the background he heard Alice scream something. He didn’t know if it was from horror or for help. There wasn’t much he could do either way.
The groom hauled Dylan up by the arm and closed rough frost-capped teeth around his arm. Dylan screwed his face up and grabbed for the tiny, faded hope that this could,maybe, still be a very detailed coma dream.
Pain crushed down on his arm, and he howled in shock. He’d seen the wolf’s teeth, but the bite didn’t feel sharp. It was blunt pressure that punched through skin and bent bone. Dylan writhed in pain as he tried to scream.
Before the bone could snap, someone reached over the wolf’s head and grabbed his snout. Gloved fingers hooked into the peeled-back nose and yanked to force the wolf to open its jaw. Dylan yanked his arm free and scrambled backward, his heels leaving divots in the rime of frost that had settled on the road.
Somerset gave him an annoyed look over the wolf’s head.
“Learn to duck,” he said in an irritated voice. “That's all I’ve ever asked.”
That wasn’t even true, but Dylan didn’t feel like it was time to argue.
Chapter Four
Blood on the snowwas nothing new to Somerset.
He’d spent his life doing what Yule needed done but couldn’t be seen to do. It couldn’tallbe candy canes and reindeer. after all. It was usually blood he was responsible for shedding, but blood was blood in the end.
So he didn’t know what it was about the splatter of blood on the grimy frost that coated the road that bothered him so much.Liar, the annoying voice in the back of his mind accused mildly. He turned a deaf ear as he hauled the wolf back, blood and snot bubbling out of its nose and between his fingers. Whatever it was that had unsettled him, he’d feel better once he took it out on someone else.
The wolf managed to twist free and staggered away a couple of steps. He snorted out a spray of blood and reached up to push the knotty muzzle back in with one hand. His face slid back into place, caught on the wood-bones underneath.
“You should have let me take the hand,” the wolf said. “I was going to let you keep therest.”
Somerset wiped slime off his hand on the long tail of his coat. A very small, practical part of him knew he should take that win and run with it. Yule Lad or not, there were three—he caught a glimpse of a bulky form as it came around the side of the crashed ambulance and corrected himself—fourof Winter’s wolves here. That wasn’t a fight he’d walk away from.
Of course—he heard the low growl of the other Lads’ bikes behind him as they finally caught up—he wasn’t alone either.
That made the odds better.
They were still going to bleed for it, though.
Somerset stepped between the wolf and Dylan. He glanced around briefly to locate the rest of the pack, but then kept his attention on the leader.
“Why come back?” he asked. “Did they send you to finish the job they started last year?”
